Hermann Lenz

Eugen Rapp is the hero in Autumn Light.  The author's 65-year-old alter-ego moves from Stuttgart to Munich, where he experiences the cultural life.  Rapp is the protagonist of the autobiographical series of novels, which comprises nine titles published between 1966 and 1998 under the title Vergangene Gegenwart ('Past Present').

Then he looked over to Stuttgart again, using his ghostly second sight: he saw the Birkenwaldstrasse, where the Weissenhof had once stood. His parents’ house on the hill, and behind it, the garden, enclosed by a moss-grown wall. You leave your parents’ house by the garden gate, and look out over the city. Behind a hedge and a wire fence is a vineyard. And up there where hillside drops into the valley, stands the church with the squat tower. St. Saviour’s, isn’t it? And he recalled that its original designation had been ‘the church in the vineyard.’ That’s what its architect had called it. The thick onion dome penetrated the bright haze over the valley, and on the other side was the observatory ridge, a district that Eugen thought of as rather well-heeled. He could see an avenue of trees in front of him (sycamores, if you please), and the observatory peeping up over the top of them. There was a sprinkling of villas there, and around them silence. And he thought: all your life, the sound you liked best was the wind soughing in the trees... Windows glinted on the opposite side, where the houses sat in the fields.

It was as though an image of Stuttgart were being wafted over to him, and he could see the Degerloch Heights, dark against the light. On the left, the terrain was sunny and open. The Rotenberg was visible with the greenish dome of its round temple-grave. You’d much prefer it if the old castle were still standing there. How someone could tear down the house his forefathers had lived in, merely to erect a pompous mausoleum for himself and his two wives is something you can’t get your head around. The king must have been one of those who was besotted with novelties, even if he was resolutely opposed to all libertarian tendencies. He had even wanted to demolish the Old Castle on the Schillerplatz. And in his mind Eugen followed the panoramic street towards the Schlossplatz, where the windows of the new Schloss glittered. And he thought it wasn’t quite right that he had been moved here, on the grounds that Munich was too big for him.